Xao Yang was born in Laos, and when communists took over the power in 1970, he and his family took refuge in Thailand where they stayed for 4 years in a refugee camp. Yang lost a sister and a brother during that difficult period of his life. In 1979 he succeeded, along with his family, to definitively move to USA. Xao Yang says that the day when he and his family got accepted on American territory, when he was only 13 years old, was the happiest day of his life, Jerry has a diploma obtained at the Loma Linda University and worked as a psychologist, a social assistant and as a therapist.

He is married and has 6 children, being a convinced family-man and having a religious nature. He began his career in 2005 being an amateur back then. Two years later, his successful story began, when he succeeded to transform $225 intro 8.2 millions of dollars, by participating at World Series of Poker in 2007. Yang was a part of the fulltiltpoker.com team and he surprisingly reached the final table.

Although he was considered to be the surprise of the tournament, Jerry played aggressive, basing on his abilities to decipher his adversaries’ game. At the end, only he and Tuam Lam were at the table. After 12 hours, Jerry Yang was the happy winner of the big prize of 8.2 millions of dollars.

This wasn’t a small winning, considering that Yang was occasionally playing poker at the local casino. Yang always carried with him a picture of his 6 children that he used to kiss and pray to God to help him with a good hand. Jerry donated 10% of his earnings to Make-A-Wish, Feed the Children, Ronald McDonald House foundations, as well as to the university he got his diploma from. He is very often mistaken to Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo.